


Wonderful

by plumandfinch



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 21:45:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13199166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumandfinch/pseuds/plumandfinch
Summary: The answer to the question of what to get his wife for Christmas finally comes to him in Melbourne.





	Wonderful

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @andallthatmerrymishigas for The Doctor Blake Mysteries 2017 Secret Santa.

The answer to the question of what to get his wife for Christmas finally comes to him in Melbourne. 

He’s there as a witness for a trial, feeling terribly that he left Jean, still recovering, behind in Ballarat. **  
**

The winter and spring had been particularly tough, two tragic cases right in a row, and a terrible strain of a spring flu had swept through both Ballarat in general, and their house in particular. He, Matthew, and Danny had it first and had been terrible patients; grumpy, cantankerous, and demanding. After one day of the three keeping her on the run, Jean insisted that Danny move down to the couch so that at least they were all on the same floor. Lucien liked to think he received special treatment but her fury at finding him teetering into his dressing gown a full two days before he was actually on the mend had him thinking again.

Unable to keep still, he was up two short days after that, a renewed spring in his step, and upon strolling into the kitchen, found his beautiful bride, sitting at the table, cooling cup of tea untouched and head in her hands.

Jean, of course, made a much better patient than he - “Turnabout should be fair play,” she groused croakily one evening, “but I don’t have the energy to do anything but sleep.” - even though he could tell she hated to not be up and about.

“How are you feeling, love?” he asks.

“Terrible.” she whispers.

She was, as she would complain to Alice, sick as a dog.

–

She has moved to the couch which is where he finds her the day before they board the train. He hates to leave her, but he and Matthew both are summoned to the trial and there’s nothing either of them can do about that.

“Alice is going to cover me both here and at the station, should Danny need her. She is also under strict instructions to keep her eyes on you.”

“Oh Lucien, I’ll be fine” she scoffs, the effect ruined somewhat by the cough she tries to bury delicately into her handkerchief.

–

“Blake residence,” comes the froggy voice at the other end of the phone.

“Darling.”

“Lucien! How are you, how is Melbourne?”

“The trial is difficult, as we expected,” he sighs, “but the more important question is, how are you? Alice says you’re up your feet.”

“Oh, is Alice one of your spies now?”

He chuckles warmly, “You know very well that I called her to confirm something.”

“Well, regardless, I’m feeling better and I’ve invited Alice for Christmas again.”

Lucien is quiet for a moment. “You know we don’t have to have a big do? I’m not there to help you and you’ve been so sick.”

“Lucien, it’s Christmas. And our first married one at that. I’ll be fine and you’ll help when you get home.”

That apparently being that, they moved on to pleasantries before he hung up. It was then that inspiration struck and he picked up the phone again.

–

He had been worrying about it for some time, almost since the wedding. He wanted so much for this first Christmas to be perfect. They are so incandescently happy and he is desperate to mark that in some way.

“Well, I’m getting Alice a bracelet. She admired one in a shop window so I figured that would be a good bet.” Matthew admits after Lucien confesses his concern in a quiet moment on the train.

“I got Jean earrings last year, I suppose a bracelet that matches them would be nice.”

“We can’t bloody well get the same thing, Lucien. They spend too much time with each other, they’re bound to notice.”

They sit in silence for awhile until Lucien looks so crestfallen that Matthew concedes, “It’ll come to you. You’ll know what to get her.”

–

In the end, he and Matthew barely make the last train home on Christmas Eve. They let themselves quietly into the house and Lucien makes a quick stop to investigate the tree in the living room, silently thanking Danny for his assistance, before soundlessly moving into their bedroom.

The dip in the mattress when he finally gets into bed wakes her.

“You’re home,” she murmurs, sleepily, rolling over to wind her arm around him.

There’s a moment of adjusting until they’re both comfortable and she feels the rumble of his voice. “We just made it.”

“My Christmas present,” Jean says happily before her breathing evens out and she’s asleep again.

–

“Oh  _Lucien_.” Her eyes are glimmering and he’s afraid he will burst with joy. His first gift lays open in her lap. He had watched her realization dawn as she removed the delicate cream paper and the lightest notes of scent had drifted out. “It’s the perfume from Selfridges.”

_They had ducked into the department store off of London’s busy streets to escape a sudden shower and he had watched her linger at the counter, laughing with the young salesgirl, as she proffered the inside of her wrist for a sample. In the end, they had left it behind but he caught intoxicating ribbons of it as she moved around for the rest of the day._

Now, in the morning light of their living room, he places a second box in her hands as Alice, their de facto elf with new bracelet sparkling gaily on her wrist, shifts the perfume back under the tree.  

Matthew unwraps a handsome pair of cufflinks, looking delighted and earning a kiss on the cheek from a beaming Alice, as Jean pulls a glittering crystal jar out of a mound of tissue paper.

“Well, this is beautiful,” she pauses to pull the heavy top off and sniff at the contents, “Lucien?”

“Bath salts, from that hammam…”

_She had adored Turkey but his suggestion of visiting a public bath had really given her pause. “I don’t know if I’m that adventurous, Lucien.” He had watched as she stared into the marketplace from their little cafe table. She turned back to him suddenly, shoulders squared and eyes sparkling, “Let’s.”_

“Ah,” she says catching his eye slyly, pink rising in her cheek, “that will be very relaxing. Alice, would you hand Lucien that green box? I shouldn’t be the only one opening gifts. Make sure you and Matthew have something to open as well.”

Alice obliges and before sitting back down in her own chair sets a third gift of two delicately stacked boxes in front of Jean.

She looks so gobsmacked, Lucien laughs and nudges her shoulder with his own. “This is the last one from me, darling, I promise. Open the bottom first.”

He cheerfully tears through the well-wrapped package labeled with her careful script that Alice had dutifully handed him to find a beautiful, intricate navy sweater. About to compliment her, he is interrupted by his wife’s joyous laugh, having discovered the bottom box was full of macarons.

_She had loved the chewy pastries so much, he had bought a whole box and they ate them slowly on the banks of the Seine, hand in hand. “Between these and that heavenly chocolate in Switzerland, I’m going to need a new wardrobe. It’s good we don’t have these in Ballarat!” She laughs in the perfect loose way that he’s still getting used to. “I’m sure you could bake them.” “Lucien Blake, do not tempt me!”_

Now, she laughs again and immediately passes them around the group. “I have been dreaming of these ever since we had them in Paris.”

“We could have some of this to go with them,” chuckles Matthew, holding up his newly unwrapped bottle of scotch.

“Matthew, you know I love whiskey but I’m not sure about that idea.”

“Here’s another one for you Lucien.”

“Thank you for playing our elf, Alice” Lucien grins as she hands over a present.

“Lucien!” Jean exclaims, having opened the top box.

“Ah, um, Matthew?” Lucien hastily says, “I meant to tell you something.”

“What a lovely bracelet!”

–

“You really do spoil me, you know,” she says from the vicinity of his chest where she is currently snuggled. He lays a soft kiss on her forehead.

The roast for dinner was in the oven and the rest of the guests aren’t expected for another hour so they take the opportunity to slip into their bedroom for a nap.

“You deserve to be spoiled. And you’ve been feeling so miserable, I wanted to make you feel better.”

They are silent for a moment.

“I have one last gift for you,” she says solemnly as she leans over to get a neatly wrapped box out of her nightstand drawer.

“Who’s being spoiled now?”

They sit up and lean against the headboard as he slides the wide ribbon off and removes the paper. There is a very soft sound as he lifts the cardboard lid off and moves the layer of tissue paper to find a second navy sweater, this time very small. He stares at it.

“It was the flu that made me suspicious. I was sicker than any of you and it stayed for so long and I am still tired all of the time. Alice was here a lot, taking care of the surgery, and I asked her if she would-”

And then he is kissing her fiercely, cupping her face in his hands.

_Somehow, in the endless lead up to their marriage, they have never spoken about it. But then they are strolling hand in hand down a side street in Rome when they come upon a boisterous football game played by a ragtag band. They are still smiling when she says “Oh Lucien, I’m too old for that” in response to his unasked question. He caresses her cheek then. “You’re not too old for anything, darling.” She turns to place a kiss on his palm. “If it happens,” he continued, “that will be wonderful. If it doesn’t, it will still be wonderful.”_

“Alright?” she asks now, somewhat breathlessly.

“Wonderful,” he replies.


End file.
